Committee votes to ban certain commercial displays of human remains

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Muscles and the skeleton are shown in the 2009-2010 "Bodies...The Exhibition" tour in Seattle.

Muscles and the skeleton are shown in the 2009-2010 "Bodies...The Exhibition" tour in Seattle.

Photo: Joshua Trujillo/seattlepi.com

No more 'Bodies' exhibit in Seattle? Perhaps

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If you were looking forward to the itinerant display of skinned, opened cadavers that came to Seattle last year - otherwise known as the "Bodies" exhibit - you might be out of luck.

That's because a Seattle City Council committee voted Wednesday to require that commercial displays of human remains must show proof that the dead people on view consented to being in an exhibit.

The issue arose after the show, "Bodies ... The Exhibition," came to Seattle in 2006 and 2009. The show displays roughly 20 full-body cadavers, which organizers have said come from unidentified, unclaimed bodies in China.

That has led people to criticize the globe-trotting, money-making show for displaying the remains with no informed consent, especially under the specter that profitable organ- and corpse-harvesting of executed prisoners exists in China.

"I feel if it was Native Americans, or African Americans, or women, there would be a great deal more outcry. But we can display naked Chinese bodies and nobody cares."

The show's organizer, Atlanta-based Premier Exhibitions, has said it does not know the identity or cause of death of the bodies it displays.

"They were obtained from a plastination facility in China, which received them from medical universities in China," Premier's website says, which emphasizes the show's educational component.

"These medical universities received the remains from medical examiner authorities in the Chinese Bureau of Police. The specimens are unclaimed by next of kin and there is no available donor documentation."

"The Chinese believe part of the soul resides in the earth," Chew said, describing how many Chinese people honor the dead with ceremonial graveside offerings.

Seattle's step in banning the show follows a path beaten by other states and cities in blocking "Bodies." Hawaii banned the exhibition of human remains for profit last year, and San Francisco has passed a law similar to Seattle's proposed ordinance.

In 2008, Premier agreed to tell customers that it can't confirm whether its bodies came from Chinese prisoners, in accordance to a settlement with New York's Attorney General.

If passed by the City Council, the Seattle's ordinance would make commercially displayed human remains with no proof of consent a civil infraction. Exceptions would be made for remains that are more than 100 years old, only human teeth or hair, part of an ordinary funereal display, or an object of religious veneration.